Abstract

Many business practices focus on maximizing material affluence, or wealth, despite the fact that a growing empirical literature casts doubt on whether money can buy happiness. We therefore propose that businesses consider the possibility of “time affluence” as an alternative model for improving employee well-being and ethical business practice. Across four studies, results consistently showed that, even after controlling for material affluence, the experience of time affluence was positively related to subjective well-being. Studies 3 and 4 further demonstrated that the ...

Abstract

Most new ventures fail, but a few prosper and attain rapid growth. Many factors contribute to such outcomes, but we propose that among these are mechanisms identified by cognitive science research on the origins of expert performance. Literature on this topic indicates that across many fields (e.g., medicine, science, sports, music), outstanding performance derives largely from participation in intense, prolonged, and highly focused efforts to improve current performance—a process known as deliberate practice. By comparison, mere experience in a field and ...

Note (first note only)

A good overview of the nature, benefits and antecedents of deliberate practice, useful not only to the audience of entrepreneurs to which it is primarily aimed.

Abstract

Researchers have recently argued that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework by which to evaluate moral judgment, and that individuals who endorse non-utilitarian solutions to moral dilemmas (involving active vs. passive harm) are committing an error. We report a study in which participants responded to a battery of personality assessments and a set of dilemmas that pit utilitarian and non-utilitarian options against each other. Participants who indicated greater endorsement of utilitarian solutions had higher scores on measures of Psychopathy, machiavellianism, and life ...

Abstract

This study confirms the protective role of a unique mixture of antioxidants containing vitamin C, ferulic acid, and phloretin on human skin from the harmful effects of UV irradiation. Phloretin, in addition to being a potent antioxidant, may stabilize and increase the skin availability of topically applied vitamin C and ferulic acid. We propose that antioxidant mixture will complement and synergize with sunscreens in providing photoprotection for human skin. ...

Abstract

To postpone cognitive decline and dementia in old age, primary prevention is required earlier in life during middle age. Dietary components may be modifiable determinants of mental performance. In the present study, habitual fruit and vegetable intake was studied in association with cognitive function and cognitive decline during middle age. In the Doetinchem Cohort Study, 2613 men and women aged 43-70 years at baseline (1995-2002) were examined for cognitive function twice, with a 5-year time interval. Global cognitive function and the ...

Abstract

The Flynn effect is the rise in IQ scores across the last eighty or more years documented in the general distribution of both industrialized and developing nations primarily on tests that require problem solving and non-verbal reasoning. However, whether the effect extends to the right tail (i.e., the top 5% of ability) remains unknown. The present study uses roughly 1.7 million scores of 7th-grade students on the SAT and ACT as well as scores of 5th- and 6th-grade students on the ...

Abstract

Evolutionary theories (e.g., the challenge hypothesis) suggest that testosterone plays an important role in intrasexual competition. In addition, those theories suggest that testosterone responses during competition should depend upon the presence of potential, immediate mating opportunities associated with the competition. The current research tested the hypothesis that the sex composition of individuals at a competition (ratio of opposite-sex, potential mates to same-sex individuals) would influence changes in competitors' testosterone levels. Consistent with our hypotheses, higher ratios of opposite- to same-sex individuals ...

Abstract

“Trolley cases” have been debated by moral philosophers for many years, and have more recently become the subject of experimental psychological research. Joshua Greene (2007), in particular, argues that Trolley Case fMRI results (Greene et al. 2001) support consequentialist (i.e. consequence-based) moral reasoning over deontological (i.e. principle-based) moral reasoning. According to Greene, whereas consequentialist reasoning correlates with evolutionarily newer, distinctly human “higher” cognitive processes, deontological reasoning correlates with evolutionarily older, cruder, and “morally confabulated” emotional processing. We believe that our study ...

Abstract

The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can “Google” the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect ...

Abstract

John Mikhail explores whether moral psychology is usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar. ...

Abstract

It is sometimes claimed that a consequentialist theory such as utilitarianism has problems accommodating the importance of personal commitments to other people. However, by emphasizing the distinction between criteria of rightness and decision procedures, a consequentialist can allow for non-consequentialist decision procedures, such as acting directly on the promptings of natural affection. Furthermore, such non-consequentialist motivational structures can co-exist happily with a commitment to consequentialism. It is possible to be a self-reflective consequentialist who has genuine commitments to individuals and to ...

Abstract

The N-back task is used extensively in literature as a working memory (WM) paradigm and it is increasingly used as a measure of individual differences. However, not much is known about the psychometric properties of this task and the current study aims to shed more light on this issue. We first review the current literature on the psychometric properties of the N-back task. With three experiments using task variants with different stimuli and load levels, we then investigate the nature of ...

Abstract

Does cognitive training work? There are numerous commercial training interventions claiming to improve general mental capacity; however, the scientific evidence for such claims is sparse. Nevertheless, there is accumulating evidence that certain cognitive interventions are effective. Here we provide evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive (often called “brain”) training. However, we demonstrate that there are important individual differences that determine training and transfer. We trained elementary and middle school children by means of a videogame-like working memory task. We found that ...

Abstract

Contemporary moral psychology has been enormously enriched by recent theoretical developments and empirical findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and social psychology and psychopathology. Yet despite the fact that some theorists have developed specifically “social heuristic” (Gigerenzer, 2008) and “social intuitionist” (Haidt, 2007) theories of moral judgment and behavior, and despite regular appeals to the findings of experimental social psychology, contemporary moral psychology has largely neglected the social dimensions of moral judgment and behavior. I provide a brief sketch ...

Abstract

Research has established that acts of self-control deplete a resource required for subsequent self-control tasks. The present investigation revealed that a psychological intervention—self-affirmation—facilitates self-control when the resource has been depleted. Experiments 1 and 2 found beneficial effects of self-affirmation on self-control in a depleted state. Experiments 3 and 4 suggested that self-affirmation improves self-control by promoting higher levels (vs. lower levels) of mental construal. Self-affirmation therefore holds promise as a mental strategy that reduces the likelihood of self-control failure. ...

Abstract

Many scholars claim that a parsimony principle has ontological implications. The most common such claim is that a parsimony principle entails that the world is simple. This ontological claim appears to often be coupled with the assumption that a parsimony principle would be corroborated if the world were simple. I clarify these claims, describe some minimal features of simplicity, and then show that both these claims are either false or they depend upon an implausible notion of ...

Abstract

Humans interact with fish in a number of ways and the question of whether fish have the capacity to perceive pain and to suffer has recently attracted considerable attention in both scientific and public fora. Only very recently have neuroanatomical studies revealed that teleost fish possess similar pain-processing receptors to higher vertebrates. Research has also shown that fish neurophysiology and behaviour are altered in response to noxious stimulation. In the light of this evidence, and in combination with work illustrating the ...

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) are much more common in males, a bias that may offer clues to the etiology of this condition. Although the cause of this bias remains a mystery, we argue that it occurs because ASC is an extreme manifestation of the male brain. The extreme male brain (EMB) theory, first proposed in 1997, is an extension of the Empathizing-Systemizing (E-S) theory of ...

Abstract

Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance. Yet, the efficacy of the antidepressants may also depend on the severity of initial depression scores. The purpose of this analysis is to establish the relation of baseline severity and antidepressant efficacy using a relevant dataset of published and unpublished clinical trials. We obtained data on all clinical trials submitted to the US ...

Abstract

Preferences for partners with symmetric and sex-typical faces are well documented and considered evidence for the good-genes theory of mate choice. However, it is unclear whether preferences for these traits drive the real-world selection of mates. In two samples of young heterosexual couples from the United Kingdom (Study 1) and the United States (Study 2), the authors found assortment for facial symmetry but not for sex typicality or independently rated attractiveness. Within-couple similarity in these traits did not predict relationship duration ...

Abstract

It has been hypothesized that female orgasm evolved to facilitate recruitment of high-quality genes for offspring. Supporting evidence indicates that female orgasm promotes conception, although this may be mediated by the timing of female orgasm in relation to male ejaculation. This hypothesis also predicts that women will achieve orgasm more frequently when copulating with high-quality males, but limited data exist to support this prediction. We therefore explored relationships between the timing and frequency of women's orgasms and putative markers of the ...

Abstract

Growing evidence shows that features we find attractive in members of the opposite sex signal important underlying dimensions of health and reproductive viability. It has been discovered that men with attractive faces have higher quality sperm, women with attractive bodies are more fertile, men and women with attractive voices lose their virginity sooner, men who spend more money than they earn have more sex partners, and lap dancers make more tips when they are in the fertile phase of their menstrual ...

Abstract

Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940) we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age ~18 predicted the number of biological children at age 53-56. In women, attractiveness predicted higher reproductive success in a nonlinear fashion, so that attractive (second highest quartile) women had 16% and very attractive (highest quartile) ...

Abstract

In this article, we review the major research advances made during the 1990s in the study of sexuality in marriage and other close relationships. More specifically, we provide a critical review of the empirical findings from the last decade on such sexual phenomena as sexual behavior, sexual satisfaction, and sexual attitudes within the context of marriage, dating, and other committed relationships. After highlighting the major theoretical and methodological advances of the 1990s, we focus on the research literatures of: (1) frequency ...

Abstract

Napping, when its timing and duration are designed properly, has the potential to improve our daily lives. Laboratory findings indicate that scheduled napping promotes waking function after normal sleep at night, and also counteracts decreased alertness and performance under conditions of sleep deprivation. Since these effects are evident even with naps shorter than 30 min, shiftwork problems may be alleviated by the short nap at the workplace. Multiple short naps are effective in managing excessive daytime sleepiness in narcoleptic patients under ...

Note (first note only)

The links between napping and health are tenuous and tricky. It seems that napping exerts a beneficial health effect only if naps are relatively short (less than ~30 minutes), whereas naps of longer duration have an adverse impact on morbidity and mortality.

Abstract

Long and short sleep have been associated with increased mortality. We assessed mortality and 3 aspects of sleep behavior in a large cohort with 22-year follow-up. Prospective, population-based cohort study. 21,268 twins aged > or ...

Note (first note only)

A prospective, population-based cohort study of Finnish twins. Unfortunately it lumps together all subjects who report sleeping seven hours or less.

Popular discussion: http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/SleepDisorders/6834

Abstract

Laboratory studies have shown that images of eyes can cause people to behave more cooperatively in some economic games, and in a previous experiment, we found that eye images increased the level of contributions to an honesty box. However, the generality and robustness of the eyes effect is not known. Here, we extended our research on the effects of eye images on cooperative behavior to a novel context—littering behavior in a university cafeteria—and attempted to elucidate the mechanism by which they ...

Note (first note only)

Diners were half as likely to litter a university cafeteria in the presence of posters featuring eyes than in the presence of posters featuring flowers.

Popular discussion: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-illusion-of-being-observed-can-make-you-better-person

Abstract

The consumption of a food typically leads to a decrease in its subsequent intake through habituation—a decrease in one’s responsiveness to the food and motivation to obtain it. We demonstrated that habituation to a food item can occur even when its consumption is merely imagined. Five experiments showed that people who repeatedly imagined eating a food (such as cheese) many times subsequently consumed less of the imagined food than did people who repeatedly imagined eating that food fewer times, imagined eating ...

Note (first note only)

Subjects who thought about eating a particular food item consumed about 50% less of it than did subjects who thought about other things or foods.

Popular discussion: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-thinking-persons-diet

Abstract

A 4-week experimental study (<i>N</i> = 67) examined the motivational predictors and positive emotion outcomes of regularly practicing two mental exercises: counting one's blessings (gratitude) and visualizing best possible selves (BPS). In a control exercise, participants attended to the details of their day. Undergraduates performed one of the three exercises during Session I and were asked to continue performing it at home until Session II (in 2 weeks) and again until Session III (in a further 2 weeks). Following previous theory and research, ...

Abstract

The effect of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being was examined. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions (hassles, gratitude listing, and either neutral life events or social comparison); they then kept weekly (Study 1) or daily (Study 2) records of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. In a 3rd study, persons with neuromuscular disease were randomly assigned to either the gratitude condition or to ...

Abstract

Disclosing information, thoughts, and feelings about personal and meaningful topics (experimental disclosure) is purported to have various health and psychological consequences (e.g., J. W. Pennebaker, 1993). Although the results of 2 small meta-analyses (P. G. Frisina, J. C. Borod, & S. J. Lepore, 2004; J. M. Smyth, 1998) suggest that experimental disclosure has a positive and significant effect, both used a fixed effects approach, limiting generalizability. Also, a plethora of studies on experimental disclosure have been completed that were not included ...

Abstract

I propose that the ways people respond to their own symptoms of depression influence the duration of these symptoms. People who engage in ruminative responses to depression, focusing on their symptoms and the possible causes and consequences of their symptoms, will show longer depressions than people who take action to distract themselves from their symptoms. Ruminative responses prolong depression because they allow the depressed mood to negatively bias thinking and interfere with instrumental behavior and problem-solving. Laboratory and field studies directly ...

Abstract

Many people believe that when they become depressed or dysphoric they should try to focus inwardly and evaluate their feelings and their situation in order to gain self-insight and find solutions that might ultimately resolve their problems and relieve their depressive symptoms (Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1993; Papageorgiou & Wells, 2001a, b; Watkins & Baracaia,2001). Challenging this assumption, numerous studies over the past two decades have shown that repetitive rumination about the implications of one’s depressive symptoms actually maintains those symptoms, impairs ...

Abstract

People generally share their emotions with others and believe that they will recover from their emotions after having talked about them. The aims of the present studies were to examine whether (1) talking about a specific emotional episode really facilitates emotional recovery (‘recovery’ effect) and (2) talking about emotions leads to perceived benefits (‘perceived benefits’). Consistently in the two studies, a decrease of emotional impact was found over time for participants in all conditions. Contrary to expectations, participants assigned to talk ...

Abstract

Researchers have implicated thought suppression as a factor in the etiology and maintenance of a variety of psychological disorders, including obsessive–compulsive disorder, post–traumatic stress disorder, and depression, but have virtually ignored the potentially harmful effects of suppression on self–esteem. In the current study, we examined the effects of suppressing negative self–referent thoughts on subsequent state self–esteem and mood. Participants who suppressed their negative thoughts, compared to those who did not, experienced lower state self–esteem and more anxious and depressed mood. In ...

Abstract

We examined the effects of suppressing negative self-referent thoughts on thought frequency, mood, and self-esteem over an 11-day period. Participants were randomly assigned to a suppression or control group and completed a nightly Web survey. Compared with controls, participants who suppressed a specific thought experienced it more frequently and had more anxious and depressed mood. Self-reported shamefulness of the thought moderated the effect of suppression on self-esteem. Suppression participants who rated their thoughts as shame-producing had lower self-esteem than did all ...

Abstract

The question of why there is anything at all is perhaps the deepest and most profound of all philosophical mysteries. Here, Brian Davies investigates whether it is reasonable to suppose the universe was created by God. ...

Abstract

We propose a model of affective adaptation, the processes whereby affective responses weaken after one or more exposures to emotional events. Drawing on previous research, our approach, represented by the acronym AREA, holds that people attend to self-relevant, unexplained events, react emotionally to these events, explain or reach an understanding of the events, and thereby adapt to the events (i.e., they attend less and have weaker emotional reactions to them). We report tests of new predictions about people's reactions to pleasurable ...

Abstract

Many philosophical problems are rooted in everyday thought, and experimental philosophy uses social scientific techniques to study the psychological underpinnings of such problems. In the case of free will, research suggests that people in a diverse range of cultures reject determinism, but people give conflicting responses on whether determinism would undermine moral responsibility. When presented with abstract questions, people tend to maintain that determinism would undermine responsibility, but when presented with concrete cases of wrongdoing, people tend to say that determinism ...

Abstract

Background: Supplements containing ascorbic acid, α-tocopherol, or ß-carotene do not protect against oxidative stress–related diseases in most randomized intervention trials. We suggest that other redox-active phytochemicals may be more effective and that a combination of different redox-active compounds (ie, antioxidants or reductants) may be needed for proper protection against oxidative damage. Objective: We aimed to generate a ranked food table with values for total content of redox-active compounds to test this alternative antioxidant hypothesis. Design: An assay that measures the total ...

Abstract

Curcumin, from the curry spice turmeric, has been shown to possess potent antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties and to reduce β-amyloid and plaque burden in experimental studies, but epidemiologic evidence is lacking. The authors investigated the association between usual curry consumption level and cognitive function in elderly Asians. In a population-based cohort (n = 1,010) of nondemented elderly Asian subjects aged 60–93 years in 2003, the authors compared Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores for three categories of regular curry consumption, taking into ...

Abstract

Cognitive enhancing substances such as amphetamine and modafinil have become popular in recent years to improve acute cognitive performance particularly in environments in which enhanced cognition or intelligence is required. Nutraceutical nootropics, which are natural substances that have the ability to bring about acute or chronic changes in cognition have also been gaining popularity in a range of settings and applications including the workplace, driving and in the amelioration of age related cognitive decline. Huperzine A, Vinpocetine, Acetyl-l-carnitine, Rhodiola Rosea and ...

Abstract

Educators rely heavily on learning activities that encourage elaborative studying, while activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge are used less frequently. Here, we show that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. The advantage of retrieval practice generalized across texts identical to those commonly found in science education. The advantage of retrieval practice was observed with test questions that assessed comprehension and required students to make inferences. The advantage of ...